


Practical Exercises in Free Will

by runningondreams



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Choose Your Own Adventure, Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, Extradimensional Kissing, First Kiss, First Time, Happy Ending, In an Extradimensional way, M/M, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Sad Ending, it's up to you, post-church rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 15:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams/pseuds/runningondreams
Summary: A bomb falls. Nazis die. Books are saved. Violins swell in the background.A choose-your-own-adventure story. What happens next is up to you.





	1. An Inciting Incident

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a simple missing scene fic, and then I realized I wanted more possibilities and here we are. There are three real endings and one fake one, with two major paths and some minor variations, and each ending has a link back to the start so you can try as many of those variations as you like.
> 
> Many thanks to laireshi for cheerleading and helping me test routes!
> 
> * * *

The car is a new development. It is quite obviously a _real_ car, not something Crowley willed into being the way he does his clothes. It has real rubber-and-iron wheels and glossy painted doors and even a real engine that makes quite a lot of noise, actually, but it can’t quite compete with the remembered choirs of love and praise that are still echoing through Aziraphale’s being. Part of him feels that this is not an entirely appropriate reaction to the destruction of a place of worship, but it’s also not something he can just switch off. The chord of resonance he’d felt as Crowley handed over the bag of books had struck in deep, half-remembered places that are, in truth, just as dusty and shuttered as his bookshop. There are aspects of his self he’s been ignoring since almost before Eden, and the sense memory of being entirely possessed by love, of giving his whole being over to light and song, takes some time to recover from. 

“You’re being awfully quiet,” Crowley observes, and Aziraphale realizes they’ve stopped. He can just make out the dim dark shape of his shop through the windshield, and still that sense of love thrums like a harp string.

He turns his head slightly, just enough to get a better look at Crowley. The books are suddenly heavy in his lap, the leather carrier cool and smooth under his fingertips. Physicality does have its drawbacks, and having to read emotions off an often-contradictory arrangement of facial muscles is one of them. 

He has absolutely no idea what Crowley is thinking. The expression he wears is perhaps faintly curious, and Aziraphale can see the shadow of his own face reflected in the demon’s dark glasses.

He wants to say, _Thank you,_ and _I love you,_ wants to ask, _Did you feel it? Do you really ..._ The words crowd on his tongue, light and sweet as meringue, too much a mouthful to speak. He wishes, for a brief moment, that Crowley would take off his dark glasses. Would, perhaps, make that minor shift of existence necessary to access at least one other plane and _reach out_ —but no. That would be too much to ask. Human fumbling it is.

“Everything alright?” Crowley asks, a light furrow deepening between his brows. 

“Fine, fine,” Aziraphale assures him. “I was only thinking—I merely—” He presses his lips tightly together and breathes through his nose. A drink would be handy right about now; he could invite Crowley in for a snifter and they could settle back into old patterns and—

[Invite Crowley in](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46183297#bookshop).

[No, better not](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46183108#bentley).

  
  
  
  



	2. A Car

  
  
  
  


And…

He’s not sure where that impulse was going, when he considers it more closely. He hasn’t even _seen_ Crowley in decades, why _now_ , why—

“Why did you do it?” he asks.

Crowley’s face twists into confusion. “I told you. Didn’t want to see you embarrassed.”

“I could have handled it,” Azirapahle insists. “There was no need for you to risk yourself as well. It’s only paperwork.”

Crowley quirks a skeptical eyebrow. 

“You could have _died_ ,” Aziraphale finds himself saying, a barb aimed more at himself and his own gullibility than at Crowley. “A church? With crosses and Bibles and consecrated ground? With _holy water_?”

“I knew you wouldn’t let that happen,” Crowely says. Simple. Factual. As if he’d never doubted it for a moment.

Aziraphale swallows. Physicality, he thinks, getting in the way again. “It’s not that I’m not grateful,” he says thickly, “I merely wondered if—” _if you feel this, if you—_ but he can’t say that aloud, not when Crowley will hardly accept gratitude as it is. Not when he can’t help but mention _before_ : before Eden, before the War and the Fall, and there are some things they just don’t talk about. “How did you even know what was happening?” he amends.

“I always know where you are,” Crowley says, casual and dismissive, as if that alone isn’t enough to light candles in the depths of Aziraphale’s being. “Besides, I know how _my_ people are about losing bodies, and your lot have been trying to promote you upstairs for years now. Imagine if they sent someone like _Michael_ down instead.” He shudders dramatically. 

Aziraphale nearly shudders himself. The reminder of Heaven, of his _duties_ , is as shockingly unwelcome as cold water splashed in his eyes. The silent harmony of joy and hope threading through his thoughts falters into discordant jangles of sharp-edge noise.

“You’re saying it was self-interest, then.” He watches Crowley’s face, cataloging every shift and change. “Convenience. For the sake of the Arrangement.”

“’Course.” Crowley shrugs, and the movement somehow brings him closer to Aziraphale’s side of the cab. His glasses slip down, revealing just a sliver of the yellow gaze behind them. “What else would it be?”

Try to answer that.  
Stare at him, speechless. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
Hope, as they say, springs eternal, and Aziraphale is discovering a whole new well within himself: a font that has nothing whatsoever to do with Heavenly harmonies and which surges with each beat of his heart.

“Well, I thought perhaps …” He takes a breath. The air in the car is suddenly thick and charged, like the weighty potential that rolls before a storm. “Perhaps you were motivated by more, ah, _personal_ concerns … ?”

“Self-interest _is_ personal concerns, angel,” Crowley says. He smiles, slow and knowing, and Azirapahle can feel cool fingers tracing over the edge of his hand, over the bones in his wrist and the warm stacotto of his pulse point. 

This time there are no ethereal hymns, no resounding memory. This time the feeling reverberates like a cascade of bells. Love heterodynes with fear for a high and wailing echo; desire rings through like a hammer blow and leaves him shaken. And this time Crowley is _there_ , a hint of damp leaves and banked flames lingering in the space between them as he flexes his wings on a plane just outside the physical. It’s not quite an extended hand of offering, but there’s a kind of promise in it.

Aziraphale hesitates.

[Commit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46184053#kissingend).  
[Retreat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46184320#Intermission).

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
_What else_ could _it be_ , is a question Aziraphale can’t quite voice. Not now. There is a small and fragile bloom of possibility in his heart, and it feels suddenly beset by gale-force winds. Something brushes over the back of his knuckles, and he looks down. Crowley’s hand presses against his own, back to back, long fingers spread to slip between the gaps in his grip on the bag of books. 

This time there are no remembered choirs, no pure notes of emotion, perfect and eternal. This time it hits like a wave, hope and fear and love and desire all mixed together, sweeping through with a shock like a kick to the sternum and leaving him swamped and breathless on the other side. 

He hesitates.

[Retreat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46184320#Intermission).   
[Commit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46184053#kissingend).

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. A Bookshop

  
  
  
  
“Would you like to come in? I have a rather nice brandy on hand. Calvados, I believe.”

Crowley grins with just a hint of teeth. “Thought you’d never ask.”

They leave the lamps unlit—even without the blitz blackout to consider, it’s not as if either of them actually _needs_ illumination to see by, and the shape of Aziraphale’s back room has hardly changed since the day before he opened, right down to the smell of chocolates in the air. Besides, this is a dance they can do almost anywhere, after so many millennia. A bottle, two glasses, two chairs. That Aziraphale hardly uses the couch for anything _except_ these little meetings of theirs goes unmentioned, as ever.

He pours two generous portions.

“Well,” he says, holding up his snifter. “Cheers then. To, ah … ” he casts around for something appropriate. “To books.”

“To books,” Crowley agrees. “And down with paperwork.”

“Indeed,” Aziraphale agrees. Crystal clinks and echoes. Aziraphale settles into his armchair and sets the brandy down on his desk. They drink.

After one measure, Aziraphale feels a bit less like a humming harpsichord and a bit more like someone with hands and feet and a proper presence in the earthly world. Crowley asks him what the books were, anyway, and Aziraphale shows them off happily, complete with anecdotes about the handful of prophets he’s actually managed to meet through the centuries. After two measures and an extended lament over the one book he will likely never get his hands on, he becomes aware that his record player is not, in fact, playing anything at all, and instead the busily exuberant tinkling of piano keys is happening somewhere else. Possibly on different plane of existence. He pours himself another brandy and asks about the car.

They finish the bottle. Crowley manifests a new one. The conversation meanders like a lazy afternoon, from engines and tires and railroad tracks to their mutual despair over horses, to camels and elephants, to puffing steam ships. Crowley, apparently, has actually gone flying in one of the buzzing aeroplane contraptions that howls through the sky most nights lately, which sounds like a truly ironic way to get oneself discorporated. In fact—

“You didn’t have to do it, you know,” Aziraphale says, interrupting. The soft blue and amber glows of stained glass and blessed objects glimmer in the bottom of his snifter. Crowley blinks at him owlishly.

“Do what?”

Aziraphale waves a little vaguely, trying to encapsulate the church, and the bomb, and the books into something succinct. The intent is sidelined by a reminder of the way Crowley had moved about during the whole encounter, like a prancing pony, or a particularly fastidious courtier, picking out a solitary dance.

“Scorch your feet,” he says. “Are your feet still scorched?” He looks down the length of Crowley’s legs, as if his shoes might still have been smoking all this time.

“Not really,” Crowely answers. He lifts one foot and then the other, as if to demonstrate. “’S fine.”

Aziraphale shakes his head. “You shouldn’t—shouldn’t hurt yourself. Not f’r me.” He frowns as a scrap of memory flutters. “Not ever,” he adds. He points an unsteady finger at Crowley. “No holy water.”

Crowley groans theatrically and waves the pointing finger away. _No, not, not._ “I told you. ’S not for _me_. I don’t want it for _me_.”

“But you still came,” Aziraphale says, not really listening. Pears make an inexplicable appearance in his mental landscape. Pears and apples and figs. A pomegranate, broken open to reveal gleaming red jewels. “You still came even though I said—how’d you know to come?”

Crowley does a sort of whole-body shrug. It’s a movement that speaks of hot, wet jungles and long dark coils in dappled sunlight. “’S not hard, is it? Always know where _you_ are anyway.”

Aziraphale blinks. His thoughts feel white hot. Like his sword used to. The heat sinks into his gut like coffee through cream and sings out with the bright reverberance of silver bells. “Do you really?” He leans forward, over balances, and slides rather gracelessly to the rug. There are too many layers of little miracles in the shop, in the compass above his head and the walls and the books. It’s distracting. He gives himself a shake, his _real_ self, and narrows his focus like a magnifying glass. There’s some sort of sunrise happening. A crescendo flooding through his being, bright and trumpeting.

“’Course I do,” Crowley is saying. Hissing. His sunglasses are slipping down his nose, and he leans forward too, his brow furrowing like Aziraphale’s question was perhaps an attempt at contradiction. “Tha’ss an imp—impo—bloody useful ssskill f’r a demon, knowing where ’n angel’s. ‘S sself-interest isssinit, ’s not—” He cuts himself off and goes very still. Not just physically. Aziraphale can feel him, suddenly, a shadow on another plane. Still as the void. 

Hesitant.

It occurs to Aziraphale, in a distant sort of way, that they’re very close now. Crowley’s breath is near enough to ruffle his hair. But most of his attention is in that other place, where his wings stretch out to the horizon and the echoes of a love eternal still linger, dancing ‘round the new crimson swell of possibility in his center.

A press of fingertips, just along the line of his thumb. A glint of dark scales. A question, unvoiced.

A precipice. 

[Reach out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46184053#kissingend).

Deflect.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


No.

He needs time to think. To decipher this new shape of things. Assess the risks.

They’ve both of them already taken too many risks, tonight.

He leans back, as much in his oh-so-human-body as he can manage. 

“Of course,” he says, reaching for the bottle. It changes, under his fingers, to a nicely aged Chartreuse. “Quite useful, indeed.” 

Crowley hisses, faint and non-committal, and Aziraphale keeps his gaze firmly on his own hands. 

Bottle. 

Snifter. 

Yellow-green liquor pours from the first to the second, washing away any possibly lingering hints of blue and amber reflections. He swirls it round, just to be sure.

No snatches of song. No gleam of candlelight. No cool night breeze.

He takes a sip and lets it linger on his tongue, pungent and green, and nothing at all like apples.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


[Start again?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46182946#Incite)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr @imaginaryelle](https://imaginaryelle.tumblr.com/)


	4. A Beginning

  
  
  
  


He takes Crowley’s hand with feather-light touches, and in that other place, where they exist in other ways, he presses bright seeds of memory into warm, dark earth. A snatch of laughter outside a Roman tavern. The nose of a favorite wine, the last bottle uncorked and left to breathe between them. His first taste of chocolate, smooth and rich and faintly bitter. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says with his human mouth, soft and faintly hissing. “ _Aziraphale_ ,” he repeats, and with the press of his lips comes the turn of galaxies over the desert; the lilting melody of a song not heard since the fall of Babel. The sweet, smokey tang of roasted apples.

Cool hands snake under Azirapahle’s coat, teasing at tailored boundaries and freshly ironed edges, and he can hear the gurgle and splash of fountains in a Byzantine garden as Crowely hisses wordless in his ear, feels the heavy, sun-soaked warmth of a summer afternoon’s siesta drip like honey down his throat in the wake of wanton kisses. There’s a roll like thunder in that other place. A flash of pressure passed from one to another that makes the air dance and glow in its wake, bright as burning stars. He pulls Crowley’s tie between his fingers and brushes the smell of freshly inked type through his hair; strokes the splash of rain on new spring petals down his back and sinks deeper, until his edges blur into snatches of song and luminous candle wicks, the smell of freshly broken bread, the thick, fatty taste of raw salmon. The particular pleasure of watching humor kindle in golden-yellow eyes. 

Crowley makes a sound outside the bounds of human ears and flows into him with the heat of freshly cut chiles, the slick iridescence of motor oil, the heady luxury of silk drawn over delicate skin. The twist of a pouting mouth and the dance of white curls in the breeze. They break like a waterfall, a riotous spill of being. This is no heavenly chorus, but the melody is livelier, the harmony more varied, and the resonance, that feeling of souls matched in frequency, sounding together …

The resonance is the same.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


[Start again?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46182946#Incite)

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr @imaginaryelle](https://imaginaryelle.tumblr.com/)


	5. An Intermission

  
  
  
  
He can’t do this. Not right now. It’s too much.

He pulls away.

“Right,” he says, not daring to look at Crowley’s face. He grips cool leather like a lifeline and breathes against the rapid pulse under his ribs. “Well then.” He scrabbles for the door handle and wrenches it open. The night air still smells of ozone and granite and freshly broken glass, somehow.

“Angel,” Crowley starts, but Aziraphale talks over him.

“Thank you for the lift,” he says. “I really must--things to do, you know how it is.” He shuts the door and strides quickly away, fumbling for his shop keys. 

He doesn’t look back.  
  
  
  
  
  


[Start again?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46182946#Incite)   
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr @imaginaryelle](https://imaginaryelle.tumblr.com/)


	6. An End

How did you get here? The story doesn’t even _go_ here. [Start over and try again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406575/chapters/46182946#Incite).

  
  
  
  


Still here? 

  
  
  


Well.

Fine then.

  
  


I suppose we can make allowances for genre.

  
  
  
  
  


**You have died.**

  
  
  
  


  
Happy now?

  
  


Possibly you were eaten by a grue. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr @imaginaryelle](https://imaginaryelle.tumblr.com/)


End file.
